Wittgensteinian Considerations on the Moral Status of Robots

In this chapter, I consider a Wittgensteinian response to recent arguments in favour of granting social robots rights. In particular, I propose that we adopt a Wittgensteinian approach to both the notion of evidence and to considerations of what it means to do the same thing as. I argue that a Wittgensteinian perspective of these tools can help to bring clarity to our thinking about social robots.

I consider two plausible categories of arguments for robot rights which I call the argument from empathy and the argument from performative equivalence...